Gatsby11
03-03-2015, 10:19 PM
Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries
Amelia glanced at the clock on the small table next to the bed she didn’t sleep in anymore, finished buttoning up her less-than-fashionable cardigan, and sighed. They would be here soon. It wasn’t that she didn’t welcome family visits or that she hadn’t looked forward to this particular dinner-at-lunchtime for weeks. Of course she did and had. It was her birthday, after all. But there was a disconcerting reflex every time she thought of it, some unconscious restraint, a self-imposed caveat, and she was unable to allow herself to be truly earnest in her excitement for a reason she couldn’t identify in any sort of coherent thought or words. Words. She floundered when it came to naming feelings, elucidating reasons, and extrapolating meanings. Words had been Eddy’s arena. He was the artist, the writer, the one who wrote meaningful sympathy cards and calmed the children when her own efforts proved unsuccessful.
The thought of all the years passed with—and now without—Eddy brought on a sense of surprised disbelief, and she mumbled some incoherency about couldn’t be and who would’ve thought while slipping on her sensible, plain black shoes with Velcro straps. They were so much easier to put on than the lace-ups Ellen had given her at Christmastime a few months ago. Ellen must have searched and searched to find just the right pair for Amelia’s narrow feet, knowing how much she had always enjoyed buying shoes but how difficult it often was to find a pair that fit. Amelia had been heartily touched when she opened the box late on Christmas afternoon, when the food had been consumed, the dishes put away, the lively conversation used up like a spooned-out grapefruit, the teenage grandchildren irritable, and the adult grandchildren lethargic and already looking forward to next Christmas. Blessedly oblivious to the uninterest around her, she immediately and enthusiastically switched her comfortable slippers for the expensive brown leather shoes wrapped in the crinkly mauve tissue paper. As she extended genuine thanks to Ellen, Jake, and the children, they pleasantly shrugged it off as nothing; that they wanted to get her something she’d really appreciate; that she should take pleasure in some things what with one thing and another, whatever that meant. Amelia rose from her chair to pass around hugs and pecks on the cheek. As she leaned in to embrace Ellen, there seemed to be in Ellen’s face an odd mixture of relief and satisfaction at Amelia’s pleasure in the thoughtful gift.
The first Sunday morning after Christmas, she eagerly put on the elegant shoes for church, happy to have something nice to wear on the Lord’s Day. But after the service, when the cold walk home mercifully ended, Amelia half collapsed in the plushy recliner that now doubled as a place to sleep. She bent down and slowly eased the shoes off her aching, pinched feet. Six years ago, the shoes would have been a perfect fit, but somehow, since Eddy had died, her feet had widened, flattened, and fallen. Imperceptibly, they had changed from dainty, pearl-white china pieces to cloddy, veiny-blue planks. Later, tearfully and tenderly, she put the shoes in the back of the closet and gently shut the door.
The next day, she bundled up, braved the cold—so cold it hurt to breathe—hobbled to the car, and drove to the nearest anything-store to buy the blocky, sneaker-looking shoes with Velcro straps she would wear nearly every day thereafter, even on Sundays; the sensible things she was putting on today.
Amelia glanced again at the red numbers on the clock. It had taken her longer than she anticipated to get the cardigan buttoned up and the shoes strapped on, and she still had things to do in the kitchen before the others arrived for the birthday dinner. Standing up, she ran through the list of things to do in her head: Take the roast out of the oven, set out drinks . . .
As she shuffled out of the bedroom, she glanced at the picture she kept on the wall opposite the open door. The picture had been taken over fifty years ago—on her birthday, in fact. Eddy’s arms were around her in the black-and-white photo, and the original Eddy and Amelia were wearing looks of contentment.
Eddy. She could hardly account for it, but she wasn’t sure she could truthfully say she missed him. At least, not the in the way others did. Some she knew could hardly endure hearing the name Judy or Sam or Linda without becoming weepy and nigh uncontrollable, even years later. Amelia had no illusions about Eddy, or their years together, and at times it was quite pleasant to be alone; she was quite comfortable. Others, she knew, were in far more depressing circumstances. She had encountered acquaintances and daughters of friends in the grocery store while choosing tomatoes, had heard the stories of her quickly deteriorating and disappearing contemporaries. One December, Rose had picked her up and taken her to the well-attended but poorly-minded Christmas performance put on at the rest home by Rose’s daughter’s choir. The outing had left an indelible impression on Amelia. The smell of stale coffee and soap. Droopy faces and vacant expressions. Home-knitted blankets covering laps in wheelchairs.
Yes, compared to all that, things could be far worse.
Still . . . there was that night when she had finished the duties of the day earlier than normal and her mind was left to wander aimlessly. Inevitably, with nothing else to think about, these were the nights when she felt the most crippled, the most restricted, when the stark reality of her situation inextricably lodged itself in her mind. This night, as the hours alone passed, indifference turned to melancholy, melancholy morphed into sadness, sadness spiraled down quickly to dark despair, and the daylight intangibility of it all suddenly became tactile and inescapable in the dark. The white light emanating from lamps and overhead light bulbs deflated to a dim yellow. Feeling very small in her recliner, her mind would flail about desperately, trying to grab hold of anything that might bring her back to a sense of normalcy. Amelia, and whatever made up the kaleidoscope of Amelia’s essence, was slipping away as she transformed into the embodiment of the fears that she managed to keep at bay the rest of the time.
Resolutely, she got up and with fumbling hands, began to organize the books on the small, two-level bookshelf on one side of the recliner. The small but familiar habit fragmented her hopeless perception an infinitesimal amount, and she felt a trickle of comfort in the physical routine. Life as she knew it previously seemed reasonably within her grasp. But before long, the despondency sharpened into focus again, and she rushed out to the kitchen to clean counters that didn’t need it. As she scrubbed in circles and corners, her arm slowed, the fatigue of the day resurfaced, and adrenaline that had flowed from her sense of tragic urgency seeped away. She plodded back to the recliner—sponge still in hand—and sat down for several more hopeless minutes when she thought suddenly that it might help to call Ellen. Some human interaction to bring her vagrant existence back to itself. She picked up her phone and began dialing Ellen’s number. She held the phone to her ear with both trembling hands, seconds away from her daughter’s comforting voice.
One of the grandchildren picked up, and Amelia quickly asked if Ellen was there. Hold on, Gramma. As she waited, she comforted herself with the thought that this had been the right decision. Ellen would know what to say. Amelia heard herself breathe into the phone a few seconds longer, and then Ellen picked up the phone. Amelia started talking, spilling out the helplessness, and, unable to find the words to convey her sense of displacement and loss of identity, she diverted her worries to more easily identifiable culprits that sounded discouragingly mundane when spoken aloud: the inability to realize just how she had reached this age, how Eddy was really and truly gone, the aches and pains in her muscles and bones.
Ellen was kind and helpful as always. Even before Amelia had finished attempting to describe the unfamiliar but deep emotions, Ellen began talking. Look on the bright side, she said. At least Amelia was able to be home by herself. At least she wasn’t in that awful rest home. At least some of her family was close by. It was late; she was tired, that was all.
The call ended, and Amelia eased slowly back into the familiarity of the recliner. Ellen was right, she supposed. At least she was still at home. At least her family hadn’t abandoned her. At least, at least . . . But later that night, as she pulled the blanket to her chin and turned on the TV to lull herself to sleep, she still felt the heaviness of the earlier gloom, in spite of Ellen’s words, and only came back to herself in the morning.
Amelia started at the aroma of roasting meat wafting through the house. The party! Her trance broken, she quickened her step to the living room straight off the entryway and made a final assessment of the state of this room, the adjoining dining room, and kitchen, which all formed a convenient circle, one blending into the next.
In the kitchen, she pulled two red-and-green hot pads with Christmas trees and bells on them out of a drawer and opened the oven door. Though she had done it countless times over the years, she would never get used to placing her hands into a red-hot oven with only a few millimeters of cloth protecting her fingers from three or four hundred degrees of pure, metallic heat. Bending down, the hot pads securely in place, she pulled the small pot from the oven and placed it on the stove. The task completed, she shut the oven door, leaned back up against the outdated faux wood cupboards, and fluttered quick, shallow breaths. She still forgot how much energy it took to perform the simplest of routines these days. An hour to complete the ironing that would have taken half that time a year ago. Twenty minutes to vacuum the dining room when five or ten may formerly have sufficed. During Ellen’s periodic visits, she had offered to do each of these things for her to save time, but Amelia, in another frustrating exchange, hadn’t succeeded in conveying to her daughter that what truly hurt wasn’t the extra time it took: she had no reason to save up her time for any later expenditure. It was the undeniable truth that it did take extra time that was so disheartening.
The doorbell rang shrilly, the annoying three-note tone that sounded nothing like bells. Rose’s husband had installed it last summer on Rose’s orders. The bing-ding-ding was followed by knuckles on wood as the door cracked open and Ellen’s face appeared in the space between the door and the wall.
“Knock knock, Mother! Happy birthday!”
Ellen entered, carrying a large white bowl with a dark green cover, followed by her children and her husband, Jake. At the sight of her daughter and the rest of the family, Amelia’s wilting body lifted. Her heart perked up, and she began to ask herself how she could have been worried or lukewarm toward this gathering, this . . . she struggled for an appropriate picture of just what this gathering would be. Well, in any case, what a gathering it would be! She walked to the door and began the process of giving hugs, touching her warm cheeks to the cool ones of her daughter’s family.
“Hello, my dear! It’s so wonderful of you to be here! And you, Jake!”
“Hi, Mom.” Jake leaned down to give Amelia a quick peck on the cheek. Amelia thought guiltily of all the things Ellen’s family did for her despite the considerable distance between their homes: raking leaves in the fall, a few rounds of shoveling snow in the winter, repainting her living room two years ago. Of course, there had been wonderful times too: the birthdays, graduations, and summer Sunday evening visits on the front lawn.
The processional continued with the rest of Ellen’s family. As soon as Ellen herself had shed her winter things, she rushed from the entryway into the kitchen and began setting things out, opening lids and spreading out serving dishes. Amelia came to help.
“Mother, where would you like me to put this?” Ellen asked, holding up her large white bowl.
“What is it, dear?”
“Fruit salad. We had oodles of leftovers from Jake’s work party; I always make too much,” she replied distractedly.
Amelia thought for a moment, planning out the progression of the meal silently in her head. “How about right at the beginning, next to the cups and napkins?” Amelia helpfully pointed her daughter to the far side of the counter where the buffet-style meal was to be set up.
Ellen stepped back and considered this for a moment, then spoke. “Well, what if we keep it with the other salads after the meat and bread,” she countered, not unkindly, as she usually did when Amelia made a suggestion. Amelia was used to Ellen deciding for herself how to arrange things, even when she inquired about Amelia’s opinion.
Soon enough, Amelia’s oldest son, David, arrived with his wife and two of his children. As she greeted him and his family, she thought wistfully about how many years had passed when David, with his outgoing habits that he had gotten from Eddy, would bring scores of friends home from high school football games and weekend dances. He had made a remarkable man of himself. Amelia didn’t understand any of the business he always talked about, but according to the article she had read a few days ago about him in the newspaper, he possessed an unusual mix of business skill and the ability to play a hunch. She proudly thought then, and again now, that no one could say the family name wasn’t a respected one. She had cut out the article and placed it in a drawer, meaning to put it in the family book that Eddy had started and that she had failed to update.
“Mom, something smells great!” David said, his voice brassy and loud. “I’m afraid Ben didn’t come. You know how he can get nowadays . . . fifteen years old and thinks he’s ready to take over the business . . .”
The small group of grandchildren had gathered in the small living room off the entryway, one or two engaged in the shy small talk that Amelia had noticed dominated the first bit of these family parties. Despite their ages, they were undecided if cousin friendship was a thing of the childish past to be forgotten or if it was too late to begin again now. She left them to it. Joining the others in the kitchen, she began cutting vegetables next to Ellen.
“So, Mother,” Ellen began in an unusual tone after looking around to see if others were out of earshot. “Are Rose and Jon coming?”
Amelia stopped chopping carrots to think. “I . . . believe so,” she said, after a few moments of reflection. She hadn’t thought to check, really.
The chatter continued behind them as Ellen continued meaningfully. “What I mean is . . . are . . . both of them coming?”
Now Amelia was puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean, dear.”
“Oh . . . never mind,” Ellen said and hastily started chopping double-time to make up for the few lost seconds.
The door abruptly opened and Amelia heard Rose walk in, breathing hard and talking quickly.
“Here we are! Are we the last ones? I’m so sorry we’re late, but Brady had practice.”
Wiping her hands on a paper towel, Amelia moved toward the doorway of the kitchen as her youngest and prettiest child moved quickly in the entryway, her family a ways behind her. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Rose was the mother of several children, some of them in their teens and older. Amelia had heard Rose tell stories of other men who thought Rose and her daughter were sisters. Her deep auburn locks and stylish clothes contrasted starkly with Ellen’s mousy-brown hair and appropriately middle-aged attire.
“Rose!” Amelia called happily. “There’s no problem at all, the others—”
“I know, I couldn’t believe it either. I mean, on a Saturday, on Valentine’s Day! But Brady’s coach is very serious about the whole thing,” she said, pulling off one boot. “I keep telling all the other parents how lucky we are to have him, especially compared to the last one. Thank goodness he retired before Brady hit high school,” she continued, pulling off the other boot. “I don’t know what we would have done otherwise.”
Amelia crossed the entryway to meet her affectionately as Rose’s children traipsed in. She stopped mid-embrace. Although the hubbub from the kitchen continued, it was as if an invisible but heavy veneer had fallen over the whole house, permeating all conversations and stiffening everyone’s backs uncomfortably. The grandchildren, who had just overcome the preliminary awkwardness of a few months’ disassociation, now turned away from each other, one extremely interested in the outdated encyclopedia set, another fixated on a china doll by the window. The earlier melancholy and a new discomfort began to seep in to Amelia’s consciousness.
“Is Jon—” Amelia began to ask, following Rose into the kitchen where she was greeting her sister and brother.
“Oh, Jon’s at work. He might stop in later,” Rose said tersely in between embraces.
Ellen gave Amelia a significant look that made her more confused. How had Ellen known?
Rose walked brusquely over to the counter and deposited a bucket of vanilla ice cream on the counter, the grocery store receipt soaked through and stuck to the lid.
“Oh, how fun!” Rose said, apparently impervious to the muffledness that had come over everyone, when she passed from the kitchen through the dining room and saw the grandchildren spread out through the living room. Her own children, now free of boots and coats, joined the group. “Get close together, all you cousins, I want to take a picture to send to Edward!”
Amelia wondered at this as she also left the kitchen and sat down to watch the impromptu photo session. Rose’s grown son Edward had never been one to mingle with the family at all, even when he was younger and living close by. But strangely, pictures-to-send-to-Edward was becoming an increasingly frequent event at each gathering.
“That’s right, get over there in the corner. Carver, I need you to scoot in closer to your sister. There we go . . . one more . . . Edward will love to see these!”
The grandchildren complied with this habitual quickfire of directions with the air of longtime zoo residents so familiar with the process of school groups and young families taking pictures and tapping on the glass that it was hardly worth their notice anymore.
“It’s so nice to have everyone together, isn’t it Mother? I know the kids love it as much as we do,” Rose said when the satisfactory pictures had been taken. The grandchildren began gradually moving, one by one, away from the living room, resurrecting interrupted conversations. Rose returned to the dining room and installed herself on a hard chair at the far end of the long wooden table David and Jake had just set up. Amelia, unaware that the grandchildren had such a fondness for these things, also rose from her chair and began to move back toward the kitchen, in part because of the things she had left undone when everyone began arriving, but mostly owing to the inexplicable dullness of spirit that had been creeping back. It slowly rushed over her now, and she felt oddly like she might cry. Why couldn’t she feel whatever it was that Rose seemingly was basking in that made her so apparently serene?
When Amelia reached the kitchen, she saw that Ellen had taken over the organization of the meal. She was now chatting with David’s wife, who was busy spearing Amelia’s sliced roast beef and tumbling it onto a fancy serving dish, about the delinquent son who preferred solitude to family parties. Amelia found odd comfort in the solid certainty of the family tussle Ellen and her sister-in-law discussed. In the dining room, Rose was talking to both everybody in particular and nobody in particular.
“ . . . I was saying to Brady on the way over that he really ought to be doing those one-on-one sessions his coach was talking about. He and I can both see that if Bray’d just push himself that much harder, he’d be sure to make state next year. He’s got the body for the sport, everyone says so. You know, some of those other kids swim and train nonstop all year round. I asked the coach what he thought of that sort of schedule for Brady, and he wasn’t at all sure Brady would benefit from it, really, and I mean, given Brady’s natural talent in the water, I have to say I agree.”
“Jake, would you tell the others we’re ready to eat?” Ellen called to her husband from the kitchen, raising her voice over Rose’s commentary.
“Oh yes, I’m sure that’ll bring them all running!” Rose said, chuckling, as though discussing a group of kindergartners who had been waiting anxiously for snack time. “Good luck getting them away from each other!”
The grandchildren were summoned (no luck needed) and seated. Amelia asked one of them to say grace, and the meal began. As the conversation started up, branched off, reproduced, and spread, Amelia’s cloud of gloom began to disperse.
“Brady, I hear you’re quite the fish these days,” she said, talking down the left side of the table a few places to her grandson.
Brady opened his mouth to respond, but Rose quickly leaned forward from across the table. “Oh, yes, we just can’t get him out of the water. He’s been putting in more hours than some of the older boys, and he’s only a sophomore, isn’t that right, Bray?”
Amelia looked from Rose to Brady for a confirmation of this. He looked from his mother to Amelia.
“I guess so,” he said, looking a little deflated.
“Well, do you have any competitions coming up?” Amelia pressed.
Rose interrupted again. “Just got back from one, didn’t we Bray? Although it was probably best you didn’t come to this one, Mother,” she said, now addressing Amelia directly. “I was telling one of the other moms on the team, I said, ‘If they’re going to drag us all over the state, they ought to at least let our boys swim more than one event!’”
Amelia glanced at Brady again to see if he had anything to offer.
“Mom, we can’t do more than one event. Too many people on the team,” he said with a bored tone, poking at his plate with his fork. This reasoning sounded familiar and ready from his tongue, as if he had used it before in a similar conversation. The others at the table were talking animatedly about other things, and Amelia thought how much she’d like to get onto another topic—any other topic—but found herself stuck with swimming.
“Well, that’s just the trouble, isn’t it? If they’d be more exclusive, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Rose answered.
Brady gave a derisive laugh that was unusually bitter for someone of his age and tossed a piece of roll in his mouth. “If they were more exclusive, I wouldn’t be on the team at all.”
Rose burst into easy laughter, which made Amelia feel uncomfortable again, as if she was watching a scene that should have been played behind closed doors rather than at the dinner table.
“Oh come now! Brady! That’s nonsense! Mother, he’s really an excellent swimmer,” she said, leaning toward Amelia for a split second.
“Mom, you know I’m right,” Brady said. Then, even quieter, “I’m not as good as you pretend I am.”
Amelia’s heart sank at her grandson’s defeated tone, but Rose continued as if she hadn’t heard it, yet more quickly than before. “But didn’t I tell you what Coach told me the other day? I was watching practice and he came over to me, he said . . .”
Amelia waited for Rose to turn and include her in the story about the complimentary coach, but she didn’t. Instead, Rose talked rapidly at Brady, who became increasingly fixated on what was left to eat on his plate. Seeing she had been forgotten completely by both Brady and Rose, Amelia shifted her attention to another part of the table.
“Jessica, I’d love to hear about London. What was it you were there for?”
“Oh, it was wonderful, Gramma! I was there for the theater study abroad program, and you can’t imagine what it was like to be in the Globe Theater. The Globe! Of course, it wasn’t really the Globe, since the original was burned down by religious fanatics during the 1600s—”
Rose broke into the conversation, and Amelia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m so jealous of you, Jessica! I’d love to go to London. Jon’s been there a few times for work, and he always comes back raving about it. We’re thinking of taking a trip there next year.”
Amelia had forgotten about this particular element of family gatherings, although what this element was she could hardly articulate. Rose was a dear girl, of course she was, but Amelia seldom understood what her youngest did or said. Complimenting Ellen’s hair and choice of clothes, receiving the confused praise in return with gracious yet expectant humility. Always talking two or three decibels above everyone else. Then there was that business about Jon working. On a Saturday noon in February? Yet it was Brady’s swimming practice that Rose pointed out as unbelievable, and Amelia wondered at her abrupt account of Jon’s unexpected absence. Now that she thought of it, Amelia remembered that Jon had been working on Christmas Day too. But then, Rose had never been quite like the others. As teenagers, the other children would approach Amelia with problems, often with tears, in Ellen’s case. But Amelia had never seen that side of Rose, never been her confidant. She was convinced that Rose simply didn’t have problems until the one time she walked into Rose’s room, thinking she was still out with friends. Rose was in her room with the lights off, curled in the corner rocking chair and crying softly but deeply. Her head whipped up, long red hair tumbling messily over her face, and Amelia backed out quietly, too shocked to ask what was wrong. Neither of them had spoken of the incidence.
Amelia jolted back to the present. There were guests (no, family, she quickly corrected herself) at her table, and she would have plenty of time to find answers later when she was on her own. Smiling at her granddaughter, who was now unavoidably entangled in a recitation of the merits of London by someone who had never seen the Atlantic Ocean, Amelia resumed eating. She slowly picked through the fruit salad, the last thing on her plate: pineapple, apples, grapes, strawberries . . .
“Oh no, Mom, I forgot!” exclaimed Ellen suddenly on Amelia’s right.
“Forgot what, dear?”
“The strawberries!”
“What about them? Oh, that . . . it’s really no bother at all . . .”
“Oh, I’m so embarrassed . . . I didn’t remember until just now how much you don’t like them . . . but of course I made the salad for Jake’s work, so how would I have known . . . I mean, I just wasn’t thinking ahead . . .”
“Of course, my dear, I understand,” Amelia said kindly. “I know how much you must have had on your mind, what with getting the children home and everything else ready. I wish you wouldn’t worry about it. Would you like them?” Amelia held up her plate, offering Ellen the small pile of strawberries.
“Oh, I suppose, but really, Mother . . . if I would have thought about it at all this morning, I would have remembered to pick them out . . . We’ve always known . . .” she said agitatedly.
Taking advantage of Rose’s clear distraction, the affluent conversation around the rest of the table, and Ellen’s attention, Amelia began to recount some distressing news she’d received a few days ago.
“You know, Ellen, I had a visit from an old friend of mine. You remember Carol, my grocery shopping friend? She came to tell me about her sister . . .” she stopped and began fiddling with her red plastic cup as Ellen looked at her earnestly.
“Yes, Mother? What about her?”
Amelia began to tell Ellen about the visit, then stopped. Carol was a particular friend of hers, and Amelia understood that the feelings surrounding that visit were dangerously similar to the helpless agony from the night of book-straightening and counter-scrubbing. She thought again of the phone call with Ellen.
“Mother?”
Amelia came back to herself. “Oh! Well, she called to tell me her sister was doing much better,” she finished lamely and untruthfully.
Ellen furrowed her brow. “Oh . . . I’m so pleased for her!” she said, surprised but happy.
Amelia leaned away from the table and fiddled with the napkin in her lap. Something felt different between her and Ellen. A switch had been flipped somewhere inside her, a desire ignited to keep this most recent sad news to herself. Amelia attempted to search inside of her to find a reason why. Why, when it was her own daughter, did she feel so uncomfortable sharing her deepest, most inexpressible thoughts? Ellen had never been anything but understanding, but still, Amelia felt, sooner or later, oddly stupid after truthful revelations to her daughter.
Amelia traced back time to when the clumsiness began to insert itself into her interactions with her family. But no, it wasn’t quite the same way with everyone. With Eddy, especially, she had never felt such alienation, at least not as regularly or as deeply as she felt it with Ellen. But how could that be when many times, the times that made a difference, Eddy offered hardly any advice at all? Ellen was always filled to the brim with ideas and sayings, proverbs and newspaper articles that discussed the very thing Amelia was anxious about. But with Eddy, Ellen only remembered calm and quiet embraces. But trying to detect the difference that must exist left Amelia at a loss.
Her introspection was interrupted by Ellen bringing out an enormous, homemade white sheet cake that she had snuck in sometime between her arrival and dinner. The cake was tastefully decorated with only a few candles. Then the singing began, the lights went off, Rose’s voice trumped them all, and Amelia blew out the candles, feeling rather like an obedient child. The lights came back on, the cake was sliced, and the memories of times with Mother or Gramma were passed around, reaching further and further back in time until only David had the right to speak. Amelia half listened to the stories with some level of satisfaction, but the moroseness that had begun the day and had threatened to overpower her throughout the party made a full invasion, and she felt that she would like to be alone.
The sun began to lower, casting a pale, slotted glow on the living room wall through the blinds. The time came for presents, and Amelia felt a sharp yearning to be with Eddy. She graced her way through the thanks, hardly noticing what she received from whom, and stumbled her way to the goodbyes and promises of weekend visits. Relief and another sensation—safety, she decided—emanated from the walls and furniture that were hers again. She reveled in the labor of cleaning up after the party and the subsequent return to normal duties: hour-long ironing sessions and twenty-minute vacuuming stints. In the next hours and days, Amelia’s life resumed its normal, comfortable pace, free of feelings she didn’t understand.
A cold snap had come through, beginning the day after her birthday, but they said today was supposed to be warmer. Thank goodness, because she hadn’t brought in the mail since the day of the party. The TV was still on from last night, a blurry rerun of an old sitcom from the seventies she didn’t recognize. Her hand fumbled to the TV dinner table next to the recliner. She clutched her glasses, put them on with both hands, and looked at the TV again. No, she still didn’t recognize it. She got up from the chair and checked the clock: 9:47. Odd. She usually couldn’t sleep in much past 7:30 anymore.
She had worked her way to the kitchen, through a bowl of cracked wheat with brown sugar sprinkled on top, a stale leftover roll, and a glass of lukewarm water when the doorbell rang. When she reached the door and peeked through the small hole, she saw the retreating back of a man’s head, his milk-chocolate uniform identifying him as a deliveryman. Intrigued, she unlocked the door, pulled it open, and, waving a mix of hello and goodbye to the man’s back, she saw a beautiful package on the porch. It was about the size of a thick bible and was enveloped in shimmery gold wrapping paper. The lid had the same glimmering quality about it but was cherry brown. The whole box was held together with a bright yellow elastic string that was tied in a small but elaborate bow on top of the box.
She carried the small but heavy package back through the house to her recliner, her heart beating faster every second, savoring the moment of discovery. What could it be? Her birthday was days ago . . . Hands shaking with excitement and trepidation, she undid the thin elastic bow and placed it on the table next to the recliner. She lifted up the brown lid and saw a small sheet of bright white bubble wrap protecting the contents with a card on top. The lid joined the elastic on the side table, and she lifted the card close to her face, tilting her head up to read the sophisticated-looking inscription through her bifocals. In curlicued letters that spiraled and weaved around each other, she read the card with difficulty.
Reynolds’ Fine Fruits and Chocolates
To a very special person on a very special day!
We hope you enjoy this gift of fruit selected for you from Reynolds’ Fine Fruits and Chocolates by
Rose, Jon, and family
Reynolds’ Fine Fruits are hand selected and dipped in the finest milk, dark, and white chocolates to provide the sweetest, most delectable tasting experience possible.
Beneath this, there was another typed message in plain letters:
Happy birthday, Mom! Hope you enjoy these!
Amelia, perplexed, set the card aside and lifted up the sheet of bubble wrap. Beneath the wrap—dipped in the finest milk, dark, and white chocolates—lay three enormous, luscious, rose-red strawberries. Amelia looked from the box to the card again. Her brain felt muddled as she reread the note, trying to work out the incongruity of the gift. She looked back to the strawberries. They were larger than any she had seen in a store, and each red top that poked through the chocolate glowed with an unnatural sheen.
Why had she sent another gift? Rose had already given her one at the party . . . or had she? Amelia stretched her mind back to the presents she opened after the birthday dinner. There were the mixed nuts from Ellen and Jake, the sweater from David and his wife . . . No, she realized, there had been no gift from Rose. In the befuddlement of the cake eating, the reminiscing, and Rose’s rapid commentaries to the general population of the party on all subjects, Amelia hadn’t noticed that she had only opened two wrapped boxes instead of three. She marveled at the elaborateness of this overdue present. David and Ellen lived far away from her, several hours by car. But Rose lived right here in town . . . so why . . . ?
Suddenly, Amelia wished to be anywhere but here in the recliner in this depressing room. She had never noticed how dark this room was with only a few windows along the top of the walls. She stood up abruptly, her crocheted blanket sliding to the floor, the box of strawberries toppling down beside it. The strawberries rolled around on the floor, the impact breaking off large pieces of the chocolate, exposing the too-red fruit beneath. She saw for the first time that several pictures were off-center. She walked over to the pictures and became more agitated when they wouldn’t stay straight. Frustration built inside her without fully knowing why, and she left the room as quickly as her unwieldy body allowed without cleaning up the spilled fruit.
She charged from room to room, probing each one for something to clean, to organize, but found nothing. Every speck of dust had been swept clean, every smudge had been wiped away. But there was something so terribly wrong she couldn’t escape from anywhere she went in the house. At last, she fell into the recliner again, exhausted. Frustration gave way to familiar melancholy. She looked down at the scattered strawberries, redder than Rose’s hair, the chocolate still firm and solid, even in the warm room. An unfamiliar pressing on her chest quickened her breathing, and as she looked away from the painful strawberries, she lifted the back of one hand to her cheek to wipe away the bewildered, newly falling tears.
Amelia glanced at the clock on the small table next to the bed she didn’t sleep in anymore, finished buttoning up her less-than-fashionable cardigan, and sighed. They would be here soon. It wasn’t that she didn’t welcome family visits or that she hadn’t looked forward to this particular dinner-at-lunchtime for weeks. Of course she did and had. It was her birthday, after all. But there was a disconcerting reflex every time she thought of it, some unconscious restraint, a self-imposed caveat, and she was unable to allow herself to be truly earnest in her excitement for a reason she couldn’t identify in any sort of coherent thought or words. Words. She floundered when it came to naming feelings, elucidating reasons, and extrapolating meanings. Words had been Eddy’s arena. He was the artist, the writer, the one who wrote meaningful sympathy cards and calmed the children when her own efforts proved unsuccessful.
The thought of all the years passed with—and now without—Eddy brought on a sense of surprised disbelief, and she mumbled some incoherency about couldn’t be and who would’ve thought while slipping on her sensible, plain black shoes with Velcro straps. They were so much easier to put on than the lace-ups Ellen had given her at Christmastime a few months ago. Ellen must have searched and searched to find just the right pair for Amelia’s narrow feet, knowing how much she had always enjoyed buying shoes but how difficult it often was to find a pair that fit. Amelia had been heartily touched when she opened the box late on Christmas afternoon, when the food had been consumed, the dishes put away, the lively conversation used up like a spooned-out grapefruit, the teenage grandchildren irritable, and the adult grandchildren lethargic and already looking forward to next Christmas. Blessedly oblivious to the uninterest around her, she immediately and enthusiastically switched her comfortable slippers for the expensive brown leather shoes wrapped in the crinkly mauve tissue paper. As she extended genuine thanks to Ellen, Jake, and the children, they pleasantly shrugged it off as nothing; that they wanted to get her something she’d really appreciate; that she should take pleasure in some things what with one thing and another, whatever that meant. Amelia rose from her chair to pass around hugs and pecks on the cheek. As she leaned in to embrace Ellen, there seemed to be in Ellen’s face an odd mixture of relief and satisfaction at Amelia’s pleasure in the thoughtful gift.
The first Sunday morning after Christmas, she eagerly put on the elegant shoes for church, happy to have something nice to wear on the Lord’s Day. But after the service, when the cold walk home mercifully ended, Amelia half collapsed in the plushy recliner that now doubled as a place to sleep. She bent down and slowly eased the shoes off her aching, pinched feet. Six years ago, the shoes would have been a perfect fit, but somehow, since Eddy had died, her feet had widened, flattened, and fallen. Imperceptibly, they had changed from dainty, pearl-white china pieces to cloddy, veiny-blue planks. Later, tearfully and tenderly, she put the shoes in the back of the closet and gently shut the door.
The next day, she bundled up, braved the cold—so cold it hurt to breathe—hobbled to the car, and drove to the nearest anything-store to buy the blocky, sneaker-looking shoes with Velcro straps she would wear nearly every day thereafter, even on Sundays; the sensible things she was putting on today.
Amelia glanced again at the red numbers on the clock. It had taken her longer than she anticipated to get the cardigan buttoned up and the shoes strapped on, and she still had things to do in the kitchen before the others arrived for the birthday dinner. Standing up, she ran through the list of things to do in her head: Take the roast out of the oven, set out drinks . . .
As she shuffled out of the bedroom, she glanced at the picture she kept on the wall opposite the open door. The picture had been taken over fifty years ago—on her birthday, in fact. Eddy’s arms were around her in the black-and-white photo, and the original Eddy and Amelia were wearing looks of contentment.
Eddy. She could hardly account for it, but she wasn’t sure she could truthfully say she missed him. At least, not the in the way others did. Some she knew could hardly endure hearing the name Judy or Sam or Linda without becoming weepy and nigh uncontrollable, even years later. Amelia had no illusions about Eddy, or their years together, and at times it was quite pleasant to be alone; she was quite comfortable. Others, she knew, were in far more depressing circumstances. She had encountered acquaintances and daughters of friends in the grocery store while choosing tomatoes, had heard the stories of her quickly deteriorating and disappearing contemporaries. One December, Rose had picked her up and taken her to the well-attended but poorly-minded Christmas performance put on at the rest home by Rose’s daughter’s choir. The outing had left an indelible impression on Amelia. The smell of stale coffee and soap. Droopy faces and vacant expressions. Home-knitted blankets covering laps in wheelchairs.
Yes, compared to all that, things could be far worse.
Still . . . there was that night when she had finished the duties of the day earlier than normal and her mind was left to wander aimlessly. Inevitably, with nothing else to think about, these were the nights when she felt the most crippled, the most restricted, when the stark reality of her situation inextricably lodged itself in her mind. This night, as the hours alone passed, indifference turned to melancholy, melancholy morphed into sadness, sadness spiraled down quickly to dark despair, and the daylight intangibility of it all suddenly became tactile and inescapable in the dark. The white light emanating from lamps and overhead light bulbs deflated to a dim yellow. Feeling very small in her recliner, her mind would flail about desperately, trying to grab hold of anything that might bring her back to a sense of normalcy. Amelia, and whatever made up the kaleidoscope of Amelia’s essence, was slipping away as she transformed into the embodiment of the fears that she managed to keep at bay the rest of the time.
Resolutely, she got up and with fumbling hands, began to organize the books on the small, two-level bookshelf on one side of the recliner. The small but familiar habit fragmented her hopeless perception an infinitesimal amount, and she felt a trickle of comfort in the physical routine. Life as she knew it previously seemed reasonably within her grasp. But before long, the despondency sharpened into focus again, and she rushed out to the kitchen to clean counters that didn’t need it. As she scrubbed in circles and corners, her arm slowed, the fatigue of the day resurfaced, and adrenaline that had flowed from her sense of tragic urgency seeped away. She plodded back to the recliner—sponge still in hand—and sat down for several more hopeless minutes when she thought suddenly that it might help to call Ellen. Some human interaction to bring her vagrant existence back to itself. She picked up her phone and began dialing Ellen’s number. She held the phone to her ear with both trembling hands, seconds away from her daughter’s comforting voice.
One of the grandchildren picked up, and Amelia quickly asked if Ellen was there. Hold on, Gramma. As she waited, she comforted herself with the thought that this had been the right decision. Ellen would know what to say. Amelia heard herself breathe into the phone a few seconds longer, and then Ellen picked up the phone. Amelia started talking, spilling out the helplessness, and, unable to find the words to convey her sense of displacement and loss of identity, she diverted her worries to more easily identifiable culprits that sounded discouragingly mundane when spoken aloud: the inability to realize just how she had reached this age, how Eddy was really and truly gone, the aches and pains in her muscles and bones.
Ellen was kind and helpful as always. Even before Amelia had finished attempting to describe the unfamiliar but deep emotions, Ellen began talking. Look on the bright side, she said. At least Amelia was able to be home by herself. At least she wasn’t in that awful rest home. At least some of her family was close by. It was late; she was tired, that was all.
The call ended, and Amelia eased slowly back into the familiarity of the recliner. Ellen was right, she supposed. At least she was still at home. At least her family hadn’t abandoned her. At least, at least . . . But later that night, as she pulled the blanket to her chin and turned on the TV to lull herself to sleep, she still felt the heaviness of the earlier gloom, in spite of Ellen’s words, and only came back to herself in the morning.
Amelia started at the aroma of roasting meat wafting through the house. The party! Her trance broken, she quickened her step to the living room straight off the entryway and made a final assessment of the state of this room, the adjoining dining room, and kitchen, which all formed a convenient circle, one blending into the next.
In the kitchen, she pulled two red-and-green hot pads with Christmas trees and bells on them out of a drawer and opened the oven door. Though she had done it countless times over the years, she would never get used to placing her hands into a red-hot oven with only a few millimeters of cloth protecting her fingers from three or four hundred degrees of pure, metallic heat. Bending down, the hot pads securely in place, she pulled the small pot from the oven and placed it on the stove. The task completed, she shut the oven door, leaned back up against the outdated faux wood cupboards, and fluttered quick, shallow breaths. She still forgot how much energy it took to perform the simplest of routines these days. An hour to complete the ironing that would have taken half that time a year ago. Twenty minutes to vacuum the dining room when five or ten may formerly have sufficed. During Ellen’s periodic visits, she had offered to do each of these things for her to save time, but Amelia, in another frustrating exchange, hadn’t succeeded in conveying to her daughter that what truly hurt wasn’t the extra time it took: she had no reason to save up her time for any later expenditure. It was the undeniable truth that it did take extra time that was so disheartening.
The doorbell rang shrilly, the annoying three-note tone that sounded nothing like bells. Rose’s husband had installed it last summer on Rose’s orders. The bing-ding-ding was followed by knuckles on wood as the door cracked open and Ellen’s face appeared in the space between the door and the wall.
“Knock knock, Mother! Happy birthday!”
Ellen entered, carrying a large white bowl with a dark green cover, followed by her children and her husband, Jake. At the sight of her daughter and the rest of the family, Amelia’s wilting body lifted. Her heart perked up, and she began to ask herself how she could have been worried or lukewarm toward this gathering, this . . . she struggled for an appropriate picture of just what this gathering would be. Well, in any case, what a gathering it would be! She walked to the door and began the process of giving hugs, touching her warm cheeks to the cool ones of her daughter’s family.
“Hello, my dear! It’s so wonderful of you to be here! And you, Jake!”
“Hi, Mom.” Jake leaned down to give Amelia a quick peck on the cheek. Amelia thought guiltily of all the things Ellen’s family did for her despite the considerable distance between their homes: raking leaves in the fall, a few rounds of shoveling snow in the winter, repainting her living room two years ago. Of course, there had been wonderful times too: the birthdays, graduations, and summer Sunday evening visits on the front lawn.
The processional continued with the rest of Ellen’s family. As soon as Ellen herself had shed her winter things, she rushed from the entryway into the kitchen and began setting things out, opening lids and spreading out serving dishes. Amelia came to help.
“Mother, where would you like me to put this?” Ellen asked, holding up her large white bowl.
“What is it, dear?”
“Fruit salad. We had oodles of leftovers from Jake’s work party; I always make too much,” she replied distractedly.
Amelia thought for a moment, planning out the progression of the meal silently in her head. “How about right at the beginning, next to the cups and napkins?” Amelia helpfully pointed her daughter to the far side of the counter where the buffet-style meal was to be set up.
Ellen stepped back and considered this for a moment, then spoke. “Well, what if we keep it with the other salads after the meat and bread,” she countered, not unkindly, as she usually did when Amelia made a suggestion. Amelia was used to Ellen deciding for herself how to arrange things, even when she inquired about Amelia’s opinion.
Soon enough, Amelia’s oldest son, David, arrived with his wife and two of his children. As she greeted him and his family, she thought wistfully about how many years had passed when David, with his outgoing habits that he had gotten from Eddy, would bring scores of friends home from high school football games and weekend dances. He had made a remarkable man of himself. Amelia didn’t understand any of the business he always talked about, but according to the article she had read a few days ago about him in the newspaper, he possessed an unusual mix of business skill and the ability to play a hunch. She proudly thought then, and again now, that no one could say the family name wasn’t a respected one. She had cut out the article and placed it in a drawer, meaning to put it in the family book that Eddy had started and that she had failed to update.
“Mom, something smells great!” David said, his voice brassy and loud. “I’m afraid Ben didn’t come. You know how he can get nowadays . . . fifteen years old and thinks he’s ready to take over the business . . .”
The small group of grandchildren had gathered in the small living room off the entryway, one or two engaged in the shy small talk that Amelia had noticed dominated the first bit of these family parties. Despite their ages, they were undecided if cousin friendship was a thing of the childish past to be forgotten or if it was too late to begin again now. She left them to it. Joining the others in the kitchen, she began cutting vegetables next to Ellen.
“So, Mother,” Ellen began in an unusual tone after looking around to see if others were out of earshot. “Are Rose and Jon coming?”
Amelia stopped chopping carrots to think. “I . . . believe so,” she said, after a few moments of reflection. She hadn’t thought to check, really.
The chatter continued behind them as Ellen continued meaningfully. “What I mean is . . . are . . . both of them coming?”
Now Amelia was puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean, dear.”
“Oh . . . never mind,” Ellen said and hastily started chopping double-time to make up for the few lost seconds.
The door abruptly opened and Amelia heard Rose walk in, breathing hard and talking quickly.
“Here we are! Are we the last ones? I’m so sorry we’re late, but Brady had practice.”
Wiping her hands on a paper towel, Amelia moved toward the doorway of the kitchen as her youngest and prettiest child moved quickly in the entryway, her family a ways behind her. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Rose was the mother of several children, some of them in their teens and older. Amelia had heard Rose tell stories of other men who thought Rose and her daughter were sisters. Her deep auburn locks and stylish clothes contrasted starkly with Ellen’s mousy-brown hair and appropriately middle-aged attire.
“Rose!” Amelia called happily. “There’s no problem at all, the others—”
“I know, I couldn’t believe it either. I mean, on a Saturday, on Valentine’s Day! But Brady’s coach is very serious about the whole thing,” she said, pulling off one boot. “I keep telling all the other parents how lucky we are to have him, especially compared to the last one. Thank goodness he retired before Brady hit high school,” she continued, pulling off the other boot. “I don’t know what we would have done otherwise.”
Amelia crossed the entryway to meet her affectionately as Rose’s children traipsed in. She stopped mid-embrace. Although the hubbub from the kitchen continued, it was as if an invisible but heavy veneer had fallen over the whole house, permeating all conversations and stiffening everyone’s backs uncomfortably. The grandchildren, who had just overcome the preliminary awkwardness of a few months’ disassociation, now turned away from each other, one extremely interested in the outdated encyclopedia set, another fixated on a china doll by the window. The earlier melancholy and a new discomfort began to seep in to Amelia’s consciousness.
“Is Jon—” Amelia began to ask, following Rose into the kitchen where she was greeting her sister and brother.
“Oh, Jon’s at work. He might stop in later,” Rose said tersely in between embraces.
Ellen gave Amelia a significant look that made her more confused. How had Ellen known?
Rose walked brusquely over to the counter and deposited a bucket of vanilla ice cream on the counter, the grocery store receipt soaked through and stuck to the lid.
“Oh, how fun!” Rose said, apparently impervious to the muffledness that had come over everyone, when she passed from the kitchen through the dining room and saw the grandchildren spread out through the living room. Her own children, now free of boots and coats, joined the group. “Get close together, all you cousins, I want to take a picture to send to Edward!”
Amelia wondered at this as she also left the kitchen and sat down to watch the impromptu photo session. Rose’s grown son Edward had never been one to mingle with the family at all, even when he was younger and living close by. But strangely, pictures-to-send-to-Edward was becoming an increasingly frequent event at each gathering.
“That’s right, get over there in the corner. Carver, I need you to scoot in closer to your sister. There we go . . . one more . . . Edward will love to see these!”
The grandchildren complied with this habitual quickfire of directions with the air of longtime zoo residents so familiar with the process of school groups and young families taking pictures and tapping on the glass that it was hardly worth their notice anymore.
“It’s so nice to have everyone together, isn’t it Mother? I know the kids love it as much as we do,” Rose said when the satisfactory pictures had been taken. The grandchildren began gradually moving, one by one, away from the living room, resurrecting interrupted conversations. Rose returned to the dining room and installed herself on a hard chair at the far end of the long wooden table David and Jake had just set up. Amelia, unaware that the grandchildren had such a fondness for these things, also rose from her chair and began to move back toward the kitchen, in part because of the things she had left undone when everyone began arriving, but mostly owing to the inexplicable dullness of spirit that had been creeping back. It slowly rushed over her now, and she felt oddly like she might cry. Why couldn’t she feel whatever it was that Rose seemingly was basking in that made her so apparently serene?
When Amelia reached the kitchen, she saw that Ellen had taken over the organization of the meal. She was now chatting with David’s wife, who was busy spearing Amelia’s sliced roast beef and tumbling it onto a fancy serving dish, about the delinquent son who preferred solitude to family parties. Amelia found odd comfort in the solid certainty of the family tussle Ellen and her sister-in-law discussed. In the dining room, Rose was talking to both everybody in particular and nobody in particular.
“ . . . I was saying to Brady on the way over that he really ought to be doing those one-on-one sessions his coach was talking about. He and I can both see that if Bray’d just push himself that much harder, he’d be sure to make state next year. He’s got the body for the sport, everyone says so. You know, some of those other kids swim and train nonstop all year round. I asked the coach what he thought of that sort of schedule for Brady, and he wasn’t at all sure Brady would benefit from it, really, and I mean, given Brady’s natural talent in the water, I have to say I agree.”
“Jake, would you tell the others we’re ready to eat?” Ellen called to her husband from the kitchen, raising her voice over Rose’s commentary.
“Oh yes, I’m sure that’ll bring them all running!” Rose said, chuckling, as though discussing a group of kindergartners who had been waiting anxiously for snack time. “Good luck getting them away from each other!”
The grandchildren were summoned (no luck needed) and seated. Amelia asked one of them to say grace, and the meal began. As the conversation started up, branched off, reproduced, and spread, Amelia’s cloud of gloom began to disperse.
“Brady, I hear you’re quite the fish these days,” she said, talking down the left side of the table a few places to her grandson.
Brady opened his mouth to respond, but Rose quickly leaned forward from across the table. “Oh, yes, we just can’t get him out of the water. He’s been putting in more hours than some of the older boys, and he’s only a sophomore, isn’t that right, Bray?”
Amelia looked from Rose to Brady for a confirmation of this. He looked from his mother to Amelia.
“I guess so,” he said, looking a little deflated.
“Well, do you have any competitions coming up?” Amelia pressed.
Rose interrupted again. “Just got back from one, didn’t we Bray? Although it was probably best you didn’t come to this one, Mother,” she said, now addressing Amelia directly. “I was telling one of the other moms on the team, I said, ‘If they’re going to drag us all over the state, they ought to at least let our boys swim more than one event!’”
Amelia glanced at Brady again to see if he had anything to offer.
“Mom, we can’t do more than one event. Too many people on the team,” he said with a bored tone, poking at his plate with his fork. This reasoning sounded familiar and ready from his tongue, as if he had used it before in a similar conversation. The others at the table were talking animatedly about other things, and Amelia thought how much she’d like to get onto another topic—any other topic—but found herself stuck with swimming.
“Well, that’s just the trouble, isn’t it? If they’d be more exclusive, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Rose answered.
Brady gave a derisive laugh that was unusually bitter for someone of his age and tossed a piece of roll in his mouth. “If they were more exclusive, I wouldn’t be on the team at all.”
Rose burst into easy laughter, which made Amelia feel uncomfortable again, as if she was watching a scene that should have been played behind closed doors rather than at the dinner table.
“Oh come now! Brady! That’s nonsense! Mother, he’s really an excellent swimmer,” she said, leaning toward Amelia for a split second.
“Mom, you know I’m right,” Brady said. Then, even quieter, “I’m not as good as you pretend I am.”
Amelia’s heart sank at her grandson’s defeated tone, but Rose continued as if she hadn’t heard it, yet more quickly than before. “But didn’t I tell you what Coach told me the other day? I was watching practice and he came over to me, he said . . .”
Amelia waited for Rose to turn and include her in the story about the complimentary coach, but she didn’t. Instead, Rose talked rapidly at Brady, who became increasingly fixated on what was left to eat on his plate. Seeing she had been forgotten completely by both Brady and Rose, Amelia shifted her attention to another part of the table.
“Jessica, I’d love to hear about London. What was it you were there for?”
“Oh, it was wonderful, Gramma! I was there for the theater study abroad program, and you can’t imagine what it was like to be in the Globe Theater. The Globe! Of course, it wasn’t really the Globe, since the original was burned down by religious fanatics during the 1600s—”
Rose broke into the conversation, and Amelia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m so jealous of you, Jessica! I’d love to go to London. Jon’s been there a few times for work, and he always comes back raving about it. We’re thinking of taking a trip there next year.”
Amelia had forgotten about this particular element of family gatherings, although what this element was she could hardly articulate. Rose was a dear girl, of course she was, but Amelia seldom understood what her youngest did or said. Complimenting Ellen’s hair and choice of clothes, receiving the confused praise in return with gracious yet expectant humility. Always talking two or three decibels above everyone else. Then there was that business about Jon working. On a Saturday noon in February? Yet it was Brady’s swimming practice that Rose pointed out as unbelievable, and Amelia wondered at her abrupt account of Jon’s unexpected absence. Now that she thought of it, Amelia remembered that Jon had been working on Christmas Day too. But then, Rose had never been quite like the others. As teenagers, the other children would approach Amelia with problems, often with tears, in Ellen’s case. But Amelia had never seen that side of Rose, never been her confidant. She was convinced that Rose simply didn’t have problems until the one time she walked into Rose’s room, thinking she was still out with friends. Rose was in her room with the lights off, curled in the corner rocking chair and crying softly but deeply. Her head whipped up, long red hair tumbling messily over her face, and Amelia backed out quietly, too shocked to ask what was wrong. Neither of them had spoken of the incidence.
Amelia jolted back to the present. There were guests (no, family, she quickly corrected herself) at her table, and she would have plenty of time to find answers later when she was on her own. Smiling at her granddaughter, who was now unavoidably entangled in a recitation of the merits of London by someone who had never seen the Atlantic Ocean, Amelia resumed eating. She slowly picked through the fruit salad, the last thing on her plate: pineapple, apples, grapes, strawberries . . .
“Oh no, Mom, I forgot!” exclaimed Ellen suddenly on Amelia’s right.
“Forgot what, dear?”
“The strawberries!”
“What about them? Oh, that . . . it’s really no bother at all . . .”
“Oh, I’m so embarrassed . . . I didn’t remember until just now how much you don’t like them . . . but of course I made the salad for Jake’s work, so how would I have known . . . I mean, I just wasn’t thinking ahead . . .”
“Of course, my dear, I understand,” Amelia said kindly. “I know how much you must have had on your mind, what with getting the children home and everything else ready. I wish you wouldn’t worry about it. Would you like them?” Amelia held up her plate, offering Ellen the small pile of strawberries.
“Oh, I suppose, but really, Mother . . . if I would have thought about it at all this morning, I would have remembered to pick them out . . . We’ve always known . . .” she said agitatedly.
Taking advantage of Rose’s clear distraction, the affluent conversation around the rest of the table, and Ellen’s attention, Amelia began to recount some distressing news she’d received a few days ago.
“You know, Ellen, I had a visit from an old friend of mine. You remember Carol, my grocery shopping friend? She came to tell me about her sister . . .” she stopped and began fiddling with her red plastic cup as Ellen looked at her earnestly.
“Yes, Mother? What about her?”
Amelia began to tell Ellen about the visit, then stopped. Carol was a particular friend of hers, and Amelia understood that the feelings surrounding that visit were dangerously similar to the helpless agony from the night of book-straightening and counter-scrubbing. She thought again of the phone call with Ellen.
“Mother?”
Amelia came back to herself. “Oh! Well, she called to tell me her sister was doing much better,” she finished lamely and untruthfully.
Ellen furrowed her brow. “Oh . . . I’m so pleased for her!” she said, surprised but happy.
Amelia leaned away from the table and fiddled with the napkin in her lap. Something felt different between her and Ellen. A switch had been flipped somewhere inside her, a desire ignited to keep this most recent sad news to herself. Amelia attempted to search inside of her to find a reason why. Why, when it was her own daughter, did she feel so uncomfortable sharing her deepest, most inexpressible thoughts? Ellen had never been anything but understanding, but still, Amelia felt, sooner or later, oddly stupid after truthful revelations to her daughter.
Amelia traced back time to when the clumsiness began to insert itself into her interactions with her family. But no, it wasn’t quite the same way with everyone. With Eddy, especially, she had never felt such alienation, at least not as regularly or as deeply as she felt it with Ellen. But how could that be when many times, the times that made a difference, Eddy offered hardly any advice at all? Ellen was always filled to the brim with ideas and sayings, proverbs and newspaper articles that discussed the very thing Amelia was anxious about. But with Eddy, Ellen only remembered calm and quiet embraces. But trying to detect the difference that must exist left Amelia at a loss.
Her introspection was interrupted by Ellen bringing out an enormous, homemade white sheet cake that she had snuck in sometime between her arrival and dinner. The cake was tastefully decorated with only a few candles. Then the singing began, the lights went off, Rose’s voice trumped them all, and Amelia blew out the candles, feeling rather like an obedient child. The lights came back on, the cake was sliced, and the memories of times with Mother or Gramma were passed around, reaching further and further back in time until only David had the right to speak. Amelia half listened to the stories with some level of satisfaction, but the moroseness that had begun the day and had threatened to overpower her throughout the party made a full invasion, and she felt that she would like to be alone.
The sun began to lower, casting a pale, slotted glow on the living room wall through the blinds. The time came for presents, and Amelia felt a sharp yearning to be with Eddy. She graced her way through the thanks, hardly noticing what she received from whom, and stumbled her way to the goodbyes and promises of weekend visits. Relief and another sensation—safety, she decided—emanated from the walls and furniture that were hers again. She reveled in the labor of cleaning up after the party and the subsequent return to normal duties: hour-long ironing sessions and twenty-minute vacuuming stints. In the next hours and days, Amelia’s life resumed its normal, comfortable pace, free of feelings she didn’t understand.
A cold snap had come through, beginning the day after her birthday, but they said today was supposed to be warmer. Thank goodness, because she hadn’t brought in the mail since the day of the party. The TV was still on from last night, a blurry rerun of an old sitcom from the seventies she didn’t recognize. Her hand fumbled to the TV dinner table next to the recliner. She clutched her glasses, put them on with both hands, and looked at the TV again. No, she still didn’t recognize it. She got up from the chair and checked the clock: 9:47. Odd. She usually couldn’t sleep in much past 7:30 anymore.
She had worked her way to the kitchen, through a bowl of cracked wheat with brown sugar sprinkled on top, a stale leftover roll, and a glass of lukewarm water when the doorbell rang. When she reached the door and peeked through the small hole, she saw the retreating back of a man’s head, his milk-chocolate uniform identifying him as a deliveryman. Intrigued, she unlocked the door, pulled it open, and, waving a mix of hello and goodbye to the man’s back, she saw a beautiful package on the porch. It was about the size of a thick bible and was enveloped in shimmery gold wrapping paper. The lid had the same glimmering quality about it but was cherry brown. The whole box was held together with a bright yellow elastic string that was tied in a small but elaborate bow on top of the box.
She carried the small but heavy package back through the house to her recliner, her heart beating faster every second, savoring the moment of discovery. What could it be? Her birthday was days ago . . . Hands shaking with excitement and trepidation, she undid the thin elastic bow and placed it on the table next to the recliner. She lifted up the brown lid and saw a small sheet of bright white bubble wrap protecting the contents with a card on top. The lid joined the elastic on the side table, and she lifted the card close to her face, tilting her head up to read the sophisticated-looking inscription through her bifocals. In curlicued letters that spiraled and weaved around each other, she read the card with difficulty.
Reynolds’ Fine Fruits and Chocolates
To a very special person on a very special day!
We hope you enjoy this gift of fruit selected for you from Reynolds’ Fine Fruits and Chocolates by
Rose, Jon, and family
Reynolds’ Fine Fruits are hand selected and dipped in the finest milk, dark, and white chocolates to provide the sweetest, most delectable tasting experience possible.
Beneath this, there was another typed message in plain letters:
Happy birthday, Mom! Hope you enjoy these!
Amelia, perplexed, set the card aside and lifted up the sheet of bubble wrap. Beneath the wrap—dipped in the finest milk, dark, and white chocolates—lay three enormous, luscious, rose-red strawberries. Amelia looked from the box to the card again. Her brain felt muddled as she reread the note, trying to work out the incongruity of the gift. She looked back to the strawberries. They were larger than any she had seen in a store, and each red top that poked through the chocolate glowed with an unnatural sheen.
Why had she sent another gift? Rose had already given her one at the party . . . or had she? Amelia stretched her mind back to the presents she opened after the birthday dinner. There were the mixed nuts from Ellen and Jake, the sweater from David and his wife . . . No, she realized, there had been no gift from Rose. In the befuddlement of the cake eating, the reminiscing, and Rose’s rapid commentaries to the general population of the party on all subjects, Amelia hadn’t noticed that she had only opened two wrapped boxes instead of three. She marveled at the elaborateness of this overdue present. David and Ellen lived far away from her, several hours by car. But Rose lived right here in town . . . so why . . . ?
Suddenly, Amelia wished to be anywhere but here in the recliner in this depressing room. She had never noticed how dark this room was with only a few windows along the top of the walls. She stood up abruptly, her crocheted blanket sliding to the floor, the box of strawberries toppling down beside it. The strawberries rolled around on the floor, the impact breaking off large pieces of the chocolate, exposing the too-red fruit beneath. She saw for the first time that several pictures were off-center. She walked over to the pictures and became more agitated when they wouldn’t stay straight. Frustration built inside her without fully knowing why, and she left the room as quickly as her unwieldy body allowed without cleaning up the spilled fruit.
She charged from room to room, probing each one for something to clean, to organize, but found nothing. Every speck of dust had been swept clean, every smudge had been wiped away. But there was something so terribly wrong she couldn’t escape from anywhere she went in the house. At last, she fell into the recliner again, exhausted. Frustration gave way to familiar melancholy. She looked down at the scattered strawberries, redder than Rose’s hair, the chocolate still firm and solid, even in the warm room. An unfamiliar pressing on her chest quickened her breathing, and as she looked away from the painful strawberries, she lifted the back of one hand to her cheek to wipe away the bewildered, newly falling tears.